Power of the Daleks - Special Edition DVD/BD (improvement of previous animation)

[JD]

I'm really getting tired of how hard it is in 3D animation to change characters' clothes. It leads to ridiculous things like the scenes in Star Wars Resistance where Torra Doza is lounging on her bed in her quarters in her full flight suit.

But then, I suppose it's always been an issue in animation. In the animated Star Trek, the only time any character ever changed their clothes was in "Yesteryear" when Spock put on a desert robe -- and even then you could see his Starfleet uniform collar underneath it. Other than that, the only alterations were equipment belts, tricorder straps, the occasional special backpack, and force field belts (which were used specifically so that they didn't have to create separate spacesuit models).

There are a lot of animated animated series where characters very rarely change their clothes outside of special one-off situations where they have to be wearing different clothes. I'm not sure how exactly it works, but I've gotten the impression that even 2D animated shows use the same material for the characters animation throughout the series.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not sure how exactly it works, but I've gotten the impression that even 2D animated shows use the same material for the characters animation throughout the series.

Sure, recycling animation cels or digital images saves time and money. Even in live action, standardized costumes let you reuse stock footage.

But it seems to be harder to create new wardrobes for 3D characters, somehow. Which is odd, since video game characters can be reskinned with different outfits at a moment's notice.

 

[David cgc]

But it seems to be harder to create new wardrobes for 3D characters, somehow. Which is odd, since video game characters can be reskinned with different outfits at a moment's notice.

Video game models are a lot simpler than the ones used for TV animation, all things being equal, so it's easier for them to ignore challenges to having varied wardrobe options. Character customization is also a big priority; gamers love playing dress-up, so the whole system is expressly designed to be flexible, even if that causes other problems (TV animation is a lot less forgiving if a character's shoulder-pads phase into their collarbone when they reach above their head, or their capes and jackets only drape in fixed, predetermined ways rather than reacting to the animation live), and games have to lean into their limitations (for instance, clothes tend to be the same shape and cut, especially in areas that flex). The Star Wars TV shows have their own priorities; as cartoons aimed at kids, having a single distinct look for each character (for both marketing and kids-keeping-track-of-who's-who reasons) is more important than expressing character through wardrobe. Also, because it allows them to do more detailed animation with less technical complexity and risk, the character models aren't built modularly, so a costume change (beyond a change in color) is the equivalent of building a new main character. It's a solvable problem, but it draws resources from other things.

That latter issue is what they're talking about when they say that having three wardrobe changes in this missing episode is a prohibitive challenge; that's effectively tripling your number of main characters, and each one is being seen for as third as much screentime, so you get less bang for your buck. Computer animation saves time and labor by front-loading a lot of the work into building the characters, so the actual animating is easier. With hand-drawn animation, you have to make the same number of drawings whether a character is in their regular appearance or in an alternative look, and designing a new look is much more straightforward (assuming you aren't just reusing the same handful of cells and hardly making any new ones, like Star Trek). Building a new character in 3D is a lot more complicated, so you get fewer alternate looks than you do on, say, "The Simpsons," and those you do get are required by the plot, intended to be used a lot, or are technically superficial (changes in color and material).

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

If we're revising animation, can someone tell the people who worked on The Invasion to go back and just fix Zoe's outfit on that one? I still prefer that animation the most, overall, but that bit has always bugged me (same with Polly's hair in Macra Terror).

 

[Christopher]

Video game models are a lot simpler than the ones used for TV animation, all things being equal, so it's easier for them to ignore challenges to having varied wardrobe options. Character customization is also a big priority; gamers love playing dress-up, so the whole system is expressly designed to be flexible, even if that causes other problems

But it stands to reason that a character modeling system for animation should be designed to be flexible too, specifically so that you can generate alternate looks as required by the story, or quickly create varied background characters by mixing and matching hair and wardrobe elements. (On The Incredibles, the animators created a generic model for secondary characters and extras that they could customize in that way.)

The Star Wars TV shows have their own priorities; as cartoons aimed at kids, having a single distinct look for each character (for both marketing and kids-keeping-track-of-who's-who reasons) is more important than expressing character through wardrobe.

But Star Wars is just one example. I'm talking about how the Doctor Who reconstructions have the same problem, and how it seems to be widespread for 3D animation in general. In the specific case of "The Macra Terror," the wardrobe limitation was so restrictive that it actually required omitting an entire scene, so it was actively undermining story priorities, not serving them. That's not a matter of choice, it's a limitation that gets in the way of the creative process.

Also, because it allows them to do more detailed animation with less technical complexity and risk, the character models aren't built modularly, so a costume change (beyond a change in color) is the equivalent of building a new main character. It's a solvable problem, but it draws resources from other things.

I can buy limited resources as an explanation for a low-budget operation like the Who reconstructions, but it doesn't wash for a Disney/Lucasfilm creation. Besides, they did vary Kaz's wardrobe on occasion, though not often.

That latter issue is what they're talking about when they say that having three wardrobe changes in this missing episode is a prohibitive challenge; that's effectively tripling your number of main characters, and each one is being seen for as third as much screentime, so you get less bang for your buck. Computer animation saves time and labor by front-loading a lot of the work into building the characters, so the actual animating is easier. With hand-drawn animation, you have to make the same number of drawings whether a character is in their regular appearance or in an alternative look, and designing a new look is much more straightforward (assuming you aren't just reusing the same handful of cells and hardly making any new ones, like Star Trek). Building a new character in 3D is a lot more complicated, so you get fewer alternate looks than you do on, say, "The Simpsons," and those you do get are required by the plot, intended to be used a lot, or are technically superficial (changes in color and material).

Yes, that's the current status quo. But the way we advance is by not being satisfied with the current status quo, by trying to find new approaches that get around those limitations. There must be solutions to these problems. If people were inventive enough to create 3D computer animation in the first place, it should be well within our capabilities to improve how it works.

 

[David cgc]

But it stands to reason that a character modeling system for animation should be designed to be flexible too, specifically so that you can generate alternate looks as required by the story, or quickly create varied background characters by mixing and matching hair and wardrobe elements. (On The Incredibles, the animators created a generic model for secondary characters and extras that they could customize in that way.)

I actually edited my post down substantially to remove a lot of technical detail, analysis, and speculation, but it all boils down to the fact that "hero-quality" computer-animated characters are complicated to make, and the clothes are the character. In live-action, it'd be the equivalent of casting another starring actor to play a main character in certain scenes. You can't think of it like it'd be as easy as changing clothes for a real person. It's harder to not get into the weeds describing the difference between video game and animated character rigs, but it exists.

But Star Wars is just one example. I'm talking about how the Doctor Who reconstructions have the same problem, and how it seems to be widespread for 3D animation in general. In the specific case of "The Macra Terror," the wardrobe limitation was so restrictive that it actually required omitting an entire scene, so it was actively undermining story priorities, not serving them. That's not a matter of choice, it's a limitation that gets in the way of the creative process.

Considering that scene was only written to explain why one character got a haircut, it feels apropos for it to be omitted because it'd require a pointless change in appearance in the reconstruction. And not making an unrumpled version of the Doctor for a twenty-second joke is absolutely a creative choice (for how to remain within production limitations), just like it'd be a creative choice to move a scene to an existing set rather than building a new one, or move the most important lines to another scene and cut the rest of it entirely. That may not feel as acceptable in a reconstruction of an existing piece, but there are plenty of other compromises in the animations.

I can buy limited resources as an explanation for a low-budget operation like the Who reconstructions, but it doesn't wash for a Disney/Lucasfilm creation. Besides, they did vary Kaz's wardrobe on occasion, though not often.

There's always a budget, for time, money, or personnel, and we can guess what it was by what they end up making. Logically, the Star Wars shows worked to their limits, so the question is, what guest characters do you want to cut so you can have more alternates of the main characters?

Yes, that's the current status quo. But the way we advance is by not being satisfied with the current status quo, by trying to find new approaches that get around those limitations. There must be solutions to these problems. If people were inventive enough to create 3D computer animation in the first place, it should be well within our capabilities to improve how it works.

That's easy to say, and as a person who fears character animation and rigging but still wants to learn it, I'd love to think I can just wait it out, but the technology is still very primitive and developing very quickly, and a lot solutions are just hard work, dumb tricks, or dumb tricks combined with hard work. We're a long, long way from having 3D or 2D animated clothing you can just pop on and off, or having an interchangeable library of clothing options. To give you an idea of how rough character animation is, I just saw this tweet about a cutting-edge technique used by riggers working on the Avengers films to keep animators from bending Thanos's joints too far.

 

[Christopher]

You can't think of it like it'd be as easy as changing clothes for a real person.

I don't. I'm not stupid, so kindly do not talk down to me in this way. I'm aware that it's a challenge, and I'm aware of why it's a challenge. But creativity is about tackling challenges and finding new solutions to them. Being unsatisfied with our limitations is how we improve.

Considering that scene was only written to explain why one character got a haircut, it feels apropos for it to be omitted because it'd require a pointless change in appearance in the reconstruction.

"Pointless?" The whole point of reconstruction is to recreate the original work as faithfully as possible. It's not an ordinary creative process, it's an exercise in historical preservation. It is important in a reconstruction to be as true to the original as it's possible to be. Going to great lengths to recreate the original is a normal part of the process. Look at the incredible amounts of hard work and technical innovation that went into the restoration of the original color to black-and-white prints of Who episodes, or to restore film prints to their original video resolution and frame rate. That was intricate, time-consuming, meticulous work, hardly necessary just for following the story, but worth doing because recreating the original in every possible respect is the entire goal of a restoration or reconstruction. It's anything but pointless. It is the point.

So it's just unacceptable that an entire scene -- an entire scene! -- was cut out of the restored episode because of a technical problem. It doesn't matter what the scene was about -- it's a matter of principle. Nothing should require cutting out an entire scene from something that's meant to be the complete restoration of something lost. I do understand the technical limitations that forced them to do it, but I'm saying we should not be content with those limitations. As the Fifth Doctor once said, "There should have been another way."

 

[Mr Awe]

@Christopher Dude you really need to relax. It was an interesting conversation and I learned a lot from David's inside perspective. Don't go making it a personal thing. The state of the technology is what it is. I'm sure the things you don't like about it also frustrates the animators. So, chill. The field will advance, but those are the limitations at the current point in time.

 

[JD]

Video game models are a lot simpler than the ones used for TV animation, all things being equal, so it's easier for them to ignore challenges to having varied wardrobe options. Character customization is also a big priority; gamers love playing dress-up, so the whole system is expressly designed to be flexible, even if that causes other problems (TV animation is a lot less forgiving if a character's shoulder-pads phase into their collarbone when they reach above their head, or their capes and jackets only drape in fixed, predetermined ways rather than reacting to the animation live), and games have to lean into their limitations (for instance, clothes tend to be the same shape and cut, especially in areas that flex). The Star Wars TV shows have their own priorities; as cartoons aimed at kids, having a single distinct look for each character (for both marketing and kids-keeping-track-of-who's-who reasons) is more important than expressing character through wardrobe. Also, because it allows them to do more detailed animation with less technical complexity and risk, the character models aren't built modularly, so a costume change (beyond a change in color) is the equivalent of building a new main character. It's a solvable problem, but it draws resources from other things.

That latter issue is what they're talking about when they say that having three wardrobe changes in this missing episode is a prohibitive challenge; that's effectively tripling your number of main characters, and each one is being seen for as third as much screentime, so you get less bang for your buck. Computer animation saves time and labor by front-loading a lot of the work into building the characters, so the actual animating is easier. With hand-drawn animation, you have to make the same number of drawings whether a character is in their regular appearance or in an alternative look, and designing a new look is much more straightforward (assuming you aren't just reusing the same handful of cells and hardly making any new ones, like Star Trek). Building a new character in 3D is a lot more complicated, so you get fewer alternate looks than you do on, say, "The Simpsons," and those you do get are required by the plot, intended to be used a lot, or are technically superficial (changes in color and material).

This was pretty interesting, thanks for posting it.
It honestly hadn't really thought about the fact that in animation the clothes is the character. I had assumed the body and clothes were separate.

I don't. I'm not stupid, so kindly do not talk down to me in this way. I'm aware that it's a challenge, and I'm aware of why it's a challenge. But creativity is about tackling challenges and finding new solutions to them. Being unsatisfied with our limitations is how we improve.

Of all of the challenges involved with 3D animation, the characters being able to change clothes more often, seems to me like something that's going to very far down on the list of priority.

"Pointless?" The whole point of reconstruction is to recreate the original work as faithfully as possible. It's not an ordinary creative process, it's an exercise in historical preservation. It is important in a reconstruction to be as true to the original as it's possible to be. Going to great lengths to recreate the original is a normal part of the process. Look at the incredible amounts of hard work and technical innovation that went into the restoration of the original color to black-and-white prints of Who episodes, or to restore film prints to their original video resolution and frame rate. That was intricate, time-consuming, meticulous work, hardly necessary just for following the story, but worth doing because recreating the original in every possible respect is the entire goal of a restoration or reconstruction. It's anything but pointless. It is the point.

That should be the goal, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.

So it's just unacceptable that an entire scene -- an entire scene! -- was cut out of the restored episode because of a technical problem. It doesn't matter what the scene was about -- it's a matter of principle. Nothing should require cutting out an entire scene from something that's meant to be the complete restoration of something lost. I do understand the technical limitations that forced them to do it, but I'm saying we should not be content with those limitations. As the Fifth Doctor once said, "There should have been another way."

I'm pretty sure they would have included the scene if they could, so the issue was probably something there was just no way around if it was cut entirely.

 

[Christopher]

I'm pretty sure they would have included the scene if they could, so the issue was probably something there was just no way around if it was cut entirely.

The issue was one of money. They didn't have the budget to create additional character models. I'm perfectly well aware of why they couldn't do it. I don't need it explained to me. I just regret it. I'm allowed to regret things. I'm allowed to wish they'd been allocated the resources to do it right instead of being forced to cut corners. And I find it frustrating that 3D animation has this particular limitation, which requires so many creative compromises. I'm allowed to be upset when technical problems get in the way of the art. It doesn't mean I don't understand why the limits exist, it just means I don't like that they exist.

 

[zarkon]

Sure, recycling animation cels or digital images saves time and money. Even in live action, standardized costumes let you reuse stock footage.

But it seems to be harder to create new wardrobes for 3D characters, somehow. Which is odd, since video game characters can be reskinned with different outfits at a moment's notice.

I raised this and the director answered thusly:

"The only 3D characters to ever appear in any of these animations have been the Daleks, the Macra, K9 and the Krargs. All the human characters have only ever been animated in 2D. Either with vector kits or completely traditionally (by hand). There is a (rather clever) animation program called Toonboom Harmony that we used on The Macra Terror, that you may be thinking of. However, that's not a 3D program. It's 2D. All still completely flat 2D layers stacked up on top of each other. They're tracked a little differently to other vector based programs, but there's no actual 3D models involved.

Having said that, you are correct in your assessment that properly animating tartan clothing is essentially impossible with 2D animation. We even have to cheat with Jamie - who most of the time isn't actually wearing tartan, if you look very closely. In fact, he isn't even wearing a kilt. He's just a got a skirt of vertical strips of fabric with horizontal bars on them. The fact the kilt is pleated allows us to use the ink outline of the strips to make it look like tartan. But it's not. Without that one cheat, we wouldn't be able to animate any Jamie stories either. Not without going to full 3D animation anyway."

 

[Christopher]

Okay, that just confuses me more. If the models are 2D, why is it so damn hard just to draw Ben and Polly with different outfits and hairstyles for the first few scenes of "The Macra Terror"? I don't care about the tartan, I care about the compromise of cutting an entire scene out of what is supposed to be a work of restoration. If that omission wasn't absolutely mandated by some serious technical limitation, then there's just no good excuse for leaving the restoration incomplete.

 

[Emperor-Tiberius]

Yeah, Norton's response confused even me.

But then again, he's the same guy who, on Gallifrey Base, responded to the question why wasn't Shada edited as a six-episode structure with "do we even KNOW it was intended to be a six-parter?"

I mean, we know its got the length of one, at least, Graham. Jeez.

 

[zarkon]

Okay, that just confuses me more. If the models are 2D, why is it so damn hard just to draw Ben and Polly with different outfits and hairstyles for the first few scenes of "The Macra Terror"? I don't care about the tartan, I care about the compromise of cutting an entire scene out of what is supposed to be a work of restoration. If that omission wasn't absolutely mandated by some serious technical limitation, then there's just no good excuse for leaving the restoration incomplete.

http://endofthelane.co.uk/Macra_Blog_2.html

 

[Christopher]

http://endofthelane.co.uk/Macra_Blog_2.html

And that just confirms that the reason the scene was cut is that the production wasn't allocated enough time and money to do it right. Which is even worse than if it was some fundamental technical limitation in the animation.

 

[zarkon]

Yes. The perennial problem with Who animations.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I remember reading Wife in Space blog, before it went defunct, and the husband insisted on watching some of the Pertwee's in b&w because "they're better that way" and I wanted to shout at him just how wrong he was about it. Pertwee's The Silurians in no way looks as good in B&W as The Web of Fear or The War Games naturally do.

I dunno. There's a certain creepiness to b&w that Doctor Who often wasn't able to recreate in color. The b&w really adds to the eerie isolation of abandoned London in part 1 of "Invasion of the Dinosaurs." And I remember being much more visually impressed with "The Mind of Evil" when I watched it on a b&w VHS rather than the re-colorized DVD. (Not to say that the re-colorization wasn't well done. It's certainly leaps & bounds ahead of their similar work on "The Ambassadors of Death.")

There are a lot of animated animated series where characters very rarely change their clothes outside of special one-off situations where they have to be wearing different clothes. I'm not sure how exactly it works, but I've gotten the impression that even 2D animated shows use the same material for the characters animation throughout the series.

Well, at least that answers the question I've always had about Launchpad McQuack.

The Star Wars TV shows have their own priorities; as cartoons aimed at kids, having a single distinct look for each character (for both marketing and kids-keeping-track-of-who's-who reasons) is more important than expressing character through wardrobe.

Reminds me of an anime I was watching recently where there was a scene where I didn't recognize one of the main characters at all because she changed clothes for the one & only time in the entire series and wasn't wearing her trademark cowboy hat.

If we're revising animation, can someone tell the people who worked on The Invasion to go back and just fix Zoe's outfit on that one? I still prefer that animation the most, overall, but that bit has always bugged me (same with Polly's hair in Macra Terror).

I was just going to say that. I wonder if it was less a mistake and more just something that they felt they could get away with, which would then allow them to use the same Zoe model for both Part 1 & Part 4. After all, you only notice the costume error if you watch "The Mind Robber" immediately before watching the animation of "The Invasion."

Also, when the Doctor gives the TARDIS circuits to Tobias Vaughn, they look totally different from how they look in the live action episodes.

Considering that scene was only written to explain why one character got a haircut, it feels apropos for it to be omitted because it'd require a pointless change in appearance in the reconstruction. And not making an unrumpled version of the Doctor for a twenty-second joke is absolutely a creative choice (for how to remain within production limitations), just like it'd be a creative choice to move a scene to an existing set rather than building a new one, or move the most important lines to another scene and cut the rest of it entirely. That may not feel as acceptable in a reconstruction of an existing piece, but there are plenty of other compromises in the animations.

A classic Doctor Who episode having to make compromises due to budgetary limitations?! These animated reconstructions are even more faithful than I thought!

"Pointless?" The whole point of reconstruction is to recreate the original work as faithfully as possible. It's not an ordinary creative process, it's an exercise in historical preservation. It is important in a reconstruction to be as true to the original as it's possible to be.

I agree up to a point. I actually prefer it when the animated episodes take creative liberties in order to better suit the medium. My favorite animations so far have been for "The Invasion," which have their own distinct visual style from the live action episodes. The live action episodes tend to use a lot of long takes of wide shots with lots of movement within the frame. Due to the limitations of how much motion they can put in the animation, it was easier and actually more visually satisfying to do more close-ups with quicker edits between them. I'd rather see the animators create the best animated episode that they possibly can rather than see them faithfully recreate badly staged 1960s studio shots.

Still, that's no excuse for cutting a scene that was in the original episode. I'm still irked about the Beatles music rights leading to an entire scene being left out of the American DVD of "The Chase."

Having said that, you are correct in your assessment that properly animating tartan clothing is essentially impossible with 2D animation. We even have to cheat with Jamie - who most of the time isn't actually wearing tartan, if you look very closely. In fact, he isn't even wearing a kilt. He's just a got a skirt of vertical strips of fabric with horizontal bars on them. The fact the kilt is pleated allows us to use the ink outline of the strips to make it look like tartan. But it's not. Without that one cheat, we wouldn't be able to animate any Jamie stories either.

Well, okay, it requires some simplifications in order to be practical in animation. I get that. It's not like these were ever going for photo-realism in the first place. So why not do a similar simplification for the other characters in "The Highlanders"? Any animated episode is already a compromise that is not going to capture the experience of watching a live-action episode. For one thing, the animation isn't sophisticated enough to include all of the great little character flourishes that Patrick Troughton & Frazier Hines added to their performances that made them come alive. Those actors were brilliant craftsmen in their own right and their work just can't be replicated in this medium.

Yeah, Norton's response confused even me.

But then again, he's the same guy who, on Gallifrey Base, responded to the question why wasn't Shada edited as a six-episode structure with "do we even KNOW it was intended to be a six-parter?"

I mean, we know its got the length of one, at least, Graham. Jeez.

And wouldn't the original script have been written with the episode breaks included? It seems like, whenever they show an old script in the bonus features, it's only ever for a single episode in the serial. Maybe they wouldn't know exactly how much of the end of the previous episode would be recapped at the beginning of the next episode. But take a bloody guess!